Convocações para o consumo da vida mobile nas narrativas publicitárias do Airbnb

• Autor(a) principal: Fonseca, Rosa Alexandra R. da
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da ESPM
• Texto Completo: http://tede2.espm.br/handle/tede/501
• topic: comunicação e consumo; capitalismo de dados; negócios de plataforma; produção de subjetividades; Airbnb; communication and consumption; data capitalism; platform economy; Airbnb, production of subjectivity; CIENCIAS SOCIAIS APLICADAS::COMUNICACAO

What would be the ways of being and living promoted in Airbnb advertising narratives? How would the brand help to produce consumers according to its proposals? This work aims to address these questions and arises from an interest in the popularity and prestige achieved by the company. Within a decade, the startup that was born promoting the practice of alternative consumption of staying in the home of strangers instead of hotels would become a global business whose market value is speculated around $ 42 billion. That firm would be part of what the market claims to be, among other names, the sharing economy. In general, the so-called sharing platforms allow consumers to rent items on-line instead of buying them (cars, bikes, houses etc.). Individuals could advertise their goods and services and receive a portion of the lease price. These businesses claim that the use of resources would be maximized, with benefits in terms of sustainability, income distribution and democratization in access to goods, services and information. Adding to these calls, the sharing economy would claim that its disruptive businesses would face large institutions and rebalance markets, with presumed advantages for consumers and citizens. Despite evidences that, in practice, it would have opposite effects to those claimed, Airbnb continued to grow in scale, which made us consider the role of its communication as a symbolic basis for its expansion. Based on a methodology of critical analysis of the way the company communicates with consumers and extensive theoretical and empirical research, we analyzed the economic, political and social context and the business strategies to then focus on the formal and symbolic analysis of selected advertising pieces. As a result of the analysis, we suggest that Airbnb’s businesses would focus not only on offering accommodation or any other services, but also on extracting data, which would constitute a valuable source of profit and power. The brand would promote the mobile life (Elliott and Urry, 2010) in its advertising narratives as an ideal of a well-lived life, encouraging the adoption of ways of being and living guided by high doses of physical and digital mobility, which would benefit Airbnb twice: clearing paths for the expansion of mobility services, and for the increase of the big data.